The 777 Writing Challenge

The writing challenge, as I understand it, is to take a current work-in-progress - in particular, the 7th line of the 7th page and then the next seven lines. I have parsed for dramatic effect but have held faithful to the tenets of the challenge. I was tagged by Michael W.Lucas.

This is from my current WIP, The Sundered Veil, a novel of the Schattenreich that takes place in the near future, but also a series of elongated and connected short stories. (i.e., I haven't yet decided what the hell it's supposed to be since I'm only about a third of the way into it. SO this really is showing my underpants).
 
We stood facing each other in the crowded tram. Brev scanned quickly, his brilliant dark eyes missing nothing.

He leaned forward, close enough to whisper, “All clear.”

I nodded and breathed easier. Then I grabbed an overhead handhold and scrutinized the aisle and the seats behind Brevalaer for any signs of the Folk.

The family called them the Tud, but by whatever name you called them, they weren’t human.

Some had bits and pieces of humanity, half-human parentage, knowledge of which was lost in the mists of time. Most could pass for human when they wanted to, making them harder to identify for what they were by those who didn’t know what to look for.

###

This is from my finished but not-yet-ready-for-publication SF novel, Daughters of Earth.


Meyna felt a tear run down her cheek as she looked at the boys’ faces.

They idolized Ramsen, and their stricken expressions showed how much his sacrifice had affected them. 

They repeated the storydance, this time embellishing it with another major movement, the escape from the Setkaens into the swamp.

Setkaens and Meynators. Meyna would rather be eaten by the latter, this world’s natural predators, than captured or killed by their invaders.

Meyna concentrated, channeling the ultraviolet of her anger and grief into movement, her arms silky light kryswings, sliding over Reeth’s.

The two women moved as one graceful struggling organism, their hands touching and then moving away. Reeth’s shrill song echoed the puffs of poison mist the Setkaens had hunted them with.

###

Bwahahahaha. I'm now entreating the following writers to do their own thing with this challenge.

I've tagged: Priya Sharma, Rob Rowntree, David Conyers, D. L. Young

 

The Three Things Blog Hop

 Í am deeply honored that Priya Sharma has asked me to take the Three Things blog hop a step further. We're supposed to talk about three things we don't write about and then three things we write about.

Please read Priya's eloquent answers to these questions and then run very fast to read all of her short stories you can find. It's not hard. Here are three of her stories to read online.
Rag and Bone
Pearls
Lebkuchen

She's awesome and so are her stories.

 So here's my take on three things.

Three things I don't write about

I don’t have an agenda. I don’t currently write to themes.  No tropes are off limits, but if I explore a trope, then it has to be in a way that I can own it. Subject tabus are few, if any.

I do have hot button items, maybe. My mother was schizophrenic and growing up in that environment left scars. I don’t care to revisit that in my writing. It has crept into my short fiction a bit. But that’s enough. For the present.

Aside from that, there are many situations I find difficult or painful – romantic betrayal, rape, sexual obsession, loneliness, helplessness – but because they are uncomfortable, the emotions these situations bring are useful to explore in fiction. Not as therapy, but as a way of mining the depths. It’s the way I use to get into a character’s head, heart and soul. So these things that I don’t like to think about or talk about – even if I’ve not experienced them – become real and disturbing (to me personally) when seen and experienced through a character.

So the subjects I don’t want to write about are those that are worth exploring, painful as it is.

I’m going to backpedal a bit and say I don’t write about ‘real’ things. I don’t believe I could be a memoir writer. But the beauty of fiction is that the real things creep in anyway. They’re disguised much of the time, which is a good thing, especially if I can’t recognize them. And I try not to go too deep into the whole ‘what is real and what not’ thing. I just try to tell the story – build it around the characters. There’s going to be stuff in there that’s got some deep personal connection. But I don’t need to know what that is. I just have to feel it when it goes on the page and through the characters and make sure it’s genuine.

 Three things I write about

Most of the above also applies here – no pervasive themes, no agendas. However.

I don’t consider my Schattenreich series a romance, but there is this huge muddled love story stuck all over the place within it. And for the next series I have planned, there will be an exploration of what constitutes love – not a love story per se but an examination of the consequences of choices made in situations where responsibility must be weighed against personal satisfaction.

So I like to write about love in all its forms and guises, not particularly as a HEA scenario or a simple us-two-against-the-world relationship. I adore complexity – messy entanglements and awkward situations – because they highlight what can go wrong and right in relationships. And because convoluted human affairs seem more real to me – the natural state of things. Humans are weird and chaotic at best. I then let these situations play out against the backdrop of the story that the characters find themselves in.

My other big ticket item in my approach to the speculative genre is the exploration of the crossroads where the rational meets the supernatural – science versus magic. I hope to continue to explore this in fiction for a few more projects.

The third big thing is sideways related to science vs. magic – mythology – both real and constructed. I can’t get enough of it. It’s what I like to read and I enjoy putting huge doses of my take on myths into my fiction.

So I'm now passing the baton now to two of my writer pals and can't wait to read what they have to say on the subject.

Rob Rowntree's science fiction novel Unbound Brothers is an exciting read. I highly recommend it.

 Richard Jones book on parenting A Dude's Guide to Babies (cowritten with Barry R. Ozer) is one of those evergreen books that will never go out of style. And he showcases a sample of his short fiction on his website.

photo credits
Harry Thomas Photography via photopin  cc
madamepsychosis via photopin cc